Shimon putting on tefillin for his morning prayers while his Christian wife wakes up from bed. His mother told him he was Jewish only after he grew up, so he did not get any Jewish education, but he's trying his best to keep the traditions.

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To those coming from the east, the hills and valleys between the Tisza river and the Carpathian mountains are known as Transcarpathia, the Ukrainian name of the province which means “the land beyond the mountains”, while those who live to the west call it Subcarpathia, “the land before the mountains”. Over the last century it has been part of six countries, from the Austro-Hungarian empire to the Soviet Union, and has been inhabited by many peoples: Ukrainians, Hungarians, Rusyns, Germans, Gypsies and Jews, lots of Jews who inevitably found themselves at home is such a geographically uncertain place.

Jewish life thrived here for three hundred years, as Jews farmed the land and practised many trades that were precluded to them in the rest of Europe. Then came the catastrophe of the Holocaust, which saw most of Jews deported to killing fields or to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Of those who survived a few decided to return, often in the hope of finding other relatives alive, and then found themselves trapped within the Iron Curtain of the Cold War. Although Jewish religion and cultural life were forbidden under Communism, the local Jewish communities survived, also thanks to an influx of Russian Jews. However, when the fall of the Soviet Union reopened the borders, most jumped at the chance to finally leave Europe for America or Israel.

Today, a few thousands Jews remain of what used to be flourishing communities, their synagogues standing empty and often in dire need of repairs. Yet Jewish life somehow carries on: in the towns of Uzhgorod, Vinogradiv, Khust and Mukacheve, whose Yiddish nickname once was das klein Yerushalayim (the little Jerusalem), Jews still gather on shabbat and the holidays, and try to keep the traditions alive, often in their assimilated, half-Christian families. Some have discovered their long-forgotten Jewish roots, while others have begun laying new ones, converting to Judaism or coming from other places. This is the story of the Jewish communities living on the hills and valleys between the Tisza river and the Carpathian mountains.

Photos and text by Tali Mayer & János Chialá.

On the hills above Khust. The dense forests and fertile valleys of the region were settled by Jews between the 17th and the 18th centuries, often at the invitation of local princes who granted them the right to own land and collect timber.

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Malkha peeling apples for the Rosh Hashana dinner, which marks the Jewish new year, at Mukacheve's other synagogue. The rabbi of this community is no longer alive but its followers continue to gather, especially on Rosh Hashana, which is is celebrated with food, vodka and apples dipped in honey.

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On a rainy and cold day, Vasily takes a dip in a small pond near his brother's house, which they use as a mikve (ritual bath) before the holidays.

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When the Jews of Khust were ordered to move into a ghetto, the Klein family fled into hiding in Budapest. Upon their return they found their house still standing, and one of them still lives there, a portrait of his mother hanging in the living room.

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Agricultural labourers wait for the bus home after a day of picking grapes at the farm of a Jewish landowner who produces Kosher wine.

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The village of Kolochava used to be home to a a few hundred Jews, living in wooden houses by the river. It all came to an end on a bright morning in late May 1944, when a column of Hungarian gendarmes drove into the village, with orders to take all the Jews away.

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The Baal Shem Tov, a great Jewish mystic from the Carpathians, once came across a praying Jewish shepherd. “Master of the world”, he pleaded, “I am ignorant and poor, so please accept my only silver coin as a sign of my gratitude for creating me!”. As he threw it to the sky, the Baal Shem Tov saw a hand from heaven reach down to grab the coin.

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A religious Jew prays his morning prayer in Kolochava. He has been sent to help the local rabbi during holidays by Chabad, a Jewish religious organization whose mission is to bring Jews together and closer to God.

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Klein was born in Khust in 1928, and doesn't know of anybody who was born before the war and is still around. In life he learned six national anthems, and can sing them in their original language: the one of Czechoslovakia, of the short-lived Carpatho-Ukrainian republic, of Hungary, of the Soviet Union and of independent Ukraine.

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Over the course of four days in May 1944, tens of thousands of Carpathian Jews were deported on these train tracks, for a one-way journey to Auschwitz.

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Vova, the president of the Jewish community of Khust, carries the Sefer Torah (Bible Scroll) during the shabbat prayers.

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Jews gather in Mukacheve for the ritual of Tashlich. On the first day of the year, it is tradition to go to a river (or to a lake, as long as it has fish in it), and cast the sins and misconceptions of the past year into the water.

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The Russian Orthodox church of Khust, just across the street from the town’s last remaining synagogue.

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Alexander is the shochet (ritual slaughterer) of Mukacheve, and the last active one in the region. There aren’t many people who eat kosher around so he is thinking to move somewhere else, probably to Israel, where he could get more work.

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Vasily listens to his daughter Vera practising the piano in their home deep in the countryside near Khust. He only rediscovered his roots after neighbours told him that his grandparents were Jewish, and now tries to keep a kosher house, for example having two fridges, one for meat and one for milk products.

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Watching the news at Sonia’s house in Vinogradiv. Like many of the Jews of Carpathia, she grew up in the Soviet Union and has little trust in contemporary Ukrainian politics. When asked about Gorbachev, she wouldn’t even answer.

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Jewish traditional dances at Kolochava’s Jewish Culture Festival, held in the local historical museum, which includes the reconstruction of a synagogue and of a certain Jewish-owned bar that apparently was the town’s main hangout spot.

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Aaron bakes challah in his Brooklyn Bakery in Uzhgorod. He grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood of New York and then moved here with his wife. He is fascinated by the region's Jewish heritage, and looks forward to showing his father that it is still possible to live a Jewish life here.

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The “Club” of Khust, a weekly meeting of elderly Jews who gather to have breakfast and read the news together. Their main source is the Forverts (the Forward), a Jewish-American newspaper founded in 1897 to report on Jewish news, in Yiddish.

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Empty prayer stalls in the synagogue of Khust. With great efforts, the community managed to restore the building and the interior is more or less intact, but there aren’t enough Jews to fill it, so the Jews of Khust find it less depressing to use a smaller side room instead.

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Listening to a classical concert in what used to be Uzhgorod's main synagogue, a grandiose oriental-style building that must have been able to accommodate hundreds of faithful.

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The office of Hesed Shapira, an organization devoted to sustain Jewish life in the region, and especially to offer care to elderly Jews. One of their most successful programs provides laptops and Skype accounts to keep in touch with distant relatives, many of whom live in Israel.

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Vova's mother prepares gefilte fish, a traditional Jewish dish, at her home in Khust.

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In the Jewish cemetery of Khust: “She always acted with care, and read the book of Psalms with love. She married her daughters to students of the Torah, and always lend a helping hand in the house. She honoured Tisha b'Av with all her strength, and as a righteous woman went straight to the world beyond...”

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Irshova has no Jewish community today, so there is nobody to keep the key to the old cemetery. The combination of numbers that opens the padlock is scribbled by the gate, but to be able to read it one needs to know gematria, the Jewish method of interpreting letters as numbers.